Most, if not all, workplace environments operate with the need to perform many logistical tasks necessary to achieve short term and long term production, maintenance, and scheduling goals. Such workplace environments include factories, research and development centers, government agencies, educational institutions, government contractors, financial institutions, retail operators, and many other complex and operationally intensive businesses. One example is the aerospace industry which is involved in the design, development, manufacture, and support of military and commercial aviation and aeronautics.
In the aerospace industry, the design and manufacture of military and commercial aircraft and avionic systems involves many integral and interrelated steps, systems, subsystems, teams of skilled workers, subcontractors, task management, maintenance, scheduling, budgeting, compliance, problem resolution, and general coordination of efforts to achieve the successful completion of compliant deliverables on-time and within budget.
The typical approach to project management involves breaking down the overall project into a series of tasks and subtasks, some of which are performed serially and some in parallel. The project manager and his/her team assigns the available resources to perform the tasks. Project management requires skills and experience in understanding scope of work, setting realistic assumptions and estimations, use of resources, risk management, critical path analysis, conflict resolution, compliance, quality control, integration of specifications, and effective leadership to be successful.
Most projects are carefully planned and conscientiously executed. Yet, it is a fundamental reality that no project of any significance goes entirely as planned. The project management team makes use of resources such as flow charts, Gantt charts, project schedules, presentations, and other computer tools to plan, schedule, track progress, identify problem areas, take corrective action, generate status reports, and make strategic adjustments to the project plan as necessary over the project lifecycle to efficiently and effectively manage the project.
The challenge is to convert the project plan and schedule into specific interrelated engineering, production, and maintenance tasks, and then assign the appropriate resources to complete those tasks. Resource allocation, timing, assessment, and adaptability are critical. Yet, historically, project managers have still had difficulty in accurately projecting the resources and time that the overall job or even certain tasks may require. In some cases, the available resources are underutilized, resulting in project inefficiencies. In other cases, the resources are over-committed, resulting in delayed schedules. Prior project management tools do not necessarily bring all aspects of the project into an optimized resource allocation solution.